What’s up - news and updates 2018

group exhibition - reCollection
TAMU-CC Department of Art + Design Faculty Exhibition 2018
Islander Gallery, Corpus Christi, Texas
November 9 - December 9, 2018
Opening Reception: Friday, November 9, 6:00 - 8:00pm

The faculty of the Department of Art + Design present reCollection, an exhibition broadly conceived upon the notion of collections and the role they play in the creative process. The exhibition presents collections as aesthetic projects their own right, along with works formed and inspired by collected materials, offering an impression of the objects and ephemera that inform the faculty’s interdisciplinary practices.

Islander Gallery
4024 Weber Road
Hamlin Shopping Center

Event Horizon, 2018
Peak Shift, Sculpture Month Houston
SITE Gallery Houston, Silos at Sawyer Yard, Houston, Texas
curated by Volker Eisele, Director/Founder Art Scan, Houston, Texas
October13 - December 1, 2018  

Sculpture Month Houston’s curated site-specific installations tie into the accumulation of ideas currently percolating throughout the art world in such events as Documenta and the Venice Biennale. SMH participates in this dialogue by providing artists with an opportunity to be challenged to create site-specific installations in unique architectural venues

Thank you to Volker Eisele, Antiartica Black, and Tommy Gregory and everyone who coordinated, installed, and volunteered to make Sculpture Month Houston and especially the exhibition of Peak Shift possible. Peak Shift opened on October 13, 2018 inside the old rice silos at SITE Gallery Houston. I am so thankful to the many people who were part of a Team Event Horizon as we installed three silos with four curved walls adding up to over 60 feet in length and approximately 15,000 reused, donated CDs and DVDs!

Houston Chronicle article “Sculpture Month Houston an immersive experience,” by Molly Glentzer 
“Working at SITE is not for sissies, offering artists a dark honeycomb of round, former grain silos that soar more than 80 feet. “This is a very hostile space,” Eisele said. “But the best work has always been site-specific, where the artist wrestles with it.”

solo exhibition - Exurban
Rudolph Blume Fine Art / ArtScan Gallery, Houston, Texas
September 15 - October 20, 2018
Artist Talk - Saturday, September 29, 2018, 12-2pm
Closing Reception, Saturday, October 20, 2018, 3-5pm

This solo exhibition of Exurban is sponsored by Sculpture Month Houston.

group exhibition - Diverse & Beautiful: Kayumanggi, Post Colonial Filipinx
Tipton Gallery, East Tennessee State University, Johnson City, Tennessee
Curated by Karlota Contreras-Koterbay
October 4 - 26, 2018
Reception: October 5, First Friday, 6 to 8 p.m.

For this exhibition, an updated version of Daily Soaps was installed with a new set of rose-scented soaps that were carved with both English and Tagalog words. Also included in this exhibition were my sculputures Forces of Nature: Whirlpools and Walmart Bath Rugs and one slinky book It’s a Wonderful Toy.

The ‘Kayumanggi: Post Colonial Filipinx’, a group exhibition featuring Filipina/o American artists is curated by Karlota Contreras-Koterbay as part of the Diverse & Beautiful: Black Asian and Hispanic Appalachia project. The multimedia exhibition focuses on the politics of skin color and post colonial investigation of the nuanced, hybrid identity through art as agency, with employment of new media, and technology the form of photography, film/video, sculptural installations and animation.

Kayumanggi: Post Colonial Filipinx is also the third in a series of exhibitions as part of a collaborative project between the ETSU Slocumb Galleries and the American Museum of Philippine Art, highlighting Filipina/o, and Filipinx-American artists, with support from the Tennessee Arts Commission, and various regional cultural institutions. The participating artists for Kayumanggi: Post Colonial Filipinx are Alejandro Acierto (TN), Leticia Bajuyo (TN/TX), Gigi Bio (NY), Richard Brown (TN), Kelvin Burzon (IN), Marinel Isla Contreras (PH), Gina Osterloh (OH) and first Filipino Emmy awardee animator Jess Espanola (CA).

Presented by the ETSU Student Activities Allocation Committee (SAAC) and the Department of Art & Design in partnership with Language & Culture Resource Center, Office of Multicultural Affairs, Multicultural Center, Digital Media Program, East TN SW VA Philippine American Association, American Museum of Philippine Art (AMPA), ETSU Phil-American Student Society. TAC Arts Build Communities (ABC) Grant and East TN Foundation Arts Fund

Johnson City Press, October 5, 2018

LAND AND SEA
Stove Works, Chattanooga, Tennessee
Curated by Mike Calway-Fagen, Stove Works, + Daniel Fuller, Atlanta Contemporary
August 10 - September 9, 2018

I am honored to be included in this inaugural exhibition of at Stove Works in Chattanooga, Tennessee and that my sculpture Turf Roll gets to join artworks by Mara Adamitz Scrupe, Trevor Reese, Matthew Jensen, Emily Marie Charles, Land Report Collective, Erica Scoggins, David Onri Anderson, Christopher Mahonski, Cory Constantine, Alicia Eggert, Jeff Whetstone, Katie Hargrave, Jiha Moon, Janaye Brown, John Russell.  

INAUGURAL SHOW: LAND AND SEA
CURATORIAL BRIEF
Over time answers to the mysteries of the world, the ones hidden in the depths of the oceans, atop mountains, and embedded in the soil beneath our feet, have gradually revealed themselves. Similarly, there are mysteries of our own making, systematic forces of industry that see towns and cities, neighborhoods, rise up around us affecting how humans interact with one another, as well as their built and natural environments. But there is still more, so much more, maybe even too much. Stove Works in collaboration with Daniel Fuller, Curator of the Atlanta Contemporary, introduces the exhibition, LAND AND SEA. Through sculpture, video, painting, and sound, LAND AND SEA explores how water, air, and soil, those specifically of Chattanooga and East Tennessee, are altered, inhabited, mythologized, reduced, abused, explored, and celebrated.

Number: Presents Art of the South 2018
Crosstown Arts, Memphis, Tennessee
July 27 - September 2, 2018

For this juried exhibition, my disc fragment collage Extreme America was selected by juror Brian Jobe to be part of the fifth annual Art of the South exhibition, presented by Number.

The exhibition will be juried by Brian Jobe, artist, educator, independent curator, and non-profit co-director of Locate Arts based in Nashville, TN.

This exhibition which Includes 50+ artists from TN, KY, VA, NC, SC, FL, GA, AL, MS, AR, LA & TX. Sponsored by Number Magazine. 

Crosstown Arts Galleries
1350 Concourse Ave., Suite 280
Memphis, TN 38104 United States

public art -Shiny Entropy 
LaPalmera Mall in Corpus Christi, Texas
On display beginning June 2018

​Thanks to a collaboration between KSpace Contemporary and LaPalmera Mall in Corpus Christi, Texas, my artworks Shiny Entropy: Vortex and Rectangles were selected to be two of the first five public art installations at the LaPalmera Mall. The selection of artists was done by the staff at K Space Contemporary in partnership with the LaPalmera Mall.

June 21 and 22, 2018 were installation days for Shiny Entropy pieces at the LaPalmera Mall in Corpus Christi, Texas. Thanks to the mall team especially Danielle, Bill, and Robert, both installations went well and by noon on June 22, both sites were audience and mall walker ready! 

Shiny Entropy: Vortex
7ft x 7ft x 4ft

Shiny Entropy: Rectangles
six panels each 7ft x 3.5ft x 1in

Glasstire article, K Space Contemporary at La Palmera, by Hannah Dean, July 7, 2018
“...sprawling malls, like any other profit-driven commercial space, are hyper-political spaces. And of course the indoor malls are becoming the ruins left behind by a growing online-economy.“

“The most visually compelling of the works, Leticia R. Bajuyo’s Shiny Entropy, which is a vortex of CDs, reads like a black hole of outdated personal information, from computer backups to wedding videos to mix tapes. If you read the recent articles about Facebook and Google’s data on you, and how it never really goes away, Bajuyo’s archaic tide of technology could be the kind of physical manifestation of this notion that makes you shit your britches.”

14th Annual Sculpture Garden Exhibit
Kemp Center For The Arts, Wichita Falls, Texas
May 10, 2018 - May 9, 2019  

I am honored that Gaze-bo(ught) was selected to be one of the ten outdoor sculptures which will be installed for this year-long exhibition of Art On The Green Sculpture Garden at the Kemp Center for the Arts.  

Gaze-bo(ught) is a gazebo in a gazebo in a gazebo.  Each gazebo form is shaped like a gem and painted a saturated pink.  The roof is made of pink resin panels that become a rose colored lens that when underneath, one is then bathed in pink light. The interior of the sculpture is covered in thick artificial grass, which is always the perfect green and never needs to be mowed.   

Thank you Krinklglas Decorative Architectural Panels

Thank you Krinklglas for including Gaze-bo(ught) on your website gallery. This sculpture features a roof made with Krinklglas pink resin panels that become a rose colored lens.  When underneath, one is then bathed in pink light thanks to Krinklglas.  

 https://www.krinklglas.com/gallery/commercial/

Krinklgslas is the premier manufacturer of translucent fiberglass reinforced panels, a versatile product that can be used for decorative and structural use, for both interior and exterior applications.

In the Belly of the Beast: A Metal Casting Exhibition
Stephen Smith Gallery in Birmingham, Alabama
May 4-August 26, 2018

I am honored to be included in this juried group exhibition of sculpture titled In the Belly of the Beast: A Metal Casting Exhibition at the Stephen Smith Gallery in Birmingham, Alabama.  And any opportunity to get to work with sculptor and curator Stacey Holloway is defintely an opportunity to not be missed.

My addition to the exhibit will be: 
Interest Only, 2017
Bronze, steel, paint, acrylic, artificial grass, and 52 soaps
43” x 7.5” x 7.5”

Interest Only was beautifully described by curator Karen Gillenwater for Project 19: Naturall at Zephyr Gallery, Louisville, KY:

Relating directly to the idea of obsolescence through its ephemeral nature, Interest Only erodes the exurban dream of abundant lives and orderly landscapes. Gallery visitors are invited to wash their hands with Monopoly hotel soaps created by the artist. The soap is used and melts, “like an interest-only loan; no principal or equity grows,” says the artist, “but when totally spent and the soap dish’s patina has changed, a new house is pulled out and the cycle starts anew. Lessons or insights are washed away as the promise of the clean, fresh, American dream of success seems abundant.” For the generations who came of age playing the popular board game, this shape is perhaps more commonly associated than any other with ideas of consumption and the accumulation of personal property. The bronze soap dish resembles the excavated, scarred earth that typically surrounds newly constructed homes prior to the addition of landscaping, which is waiting in the drawers below in the form of artificial grass, along with a supply of identical houses to maintain the cycle.

University of Alabama at Birmingham and Space One Eleven
March 8 - July 1, 2018
 

Beginning on Sunday, March 4th, I worked with students from University of Alabama at Birmingham to install at the galleries of Space One Eleven and met with 2nd-5th grade students.  This Birmingham visit continued at the university campus where I met with Sculpture classes and presented a public lecture.

On the UAB News page, they have posted details about the upcoming visit and installation.

It was wonderful to work with UAB faculty Stacey Holloway and Jared Ragland and with Space One Eleven's Director of Programs Cheryl Lewis, and CEO Peter Prinz both in the planning and execution of this project and visit to Birmingham. Beginning on Sunday, March 4th, I worked with students from University of Alabama at Birmingham to install in Space One Eleven.  This Birmingham visit continued at the university campus where I met with Sculpture classes and presented a public lecture. This installation will be on display till July 2018.

On the UAB News page, they have posted details prior to the visit and installation.

Edge Friction
K Space Contemporary, Corpus Christi, Texas
Exhibition dates: March 2 – April 26, 2018
Friday, March 2, 6-9pm - Opening Reception during the Corpus Christi March First Friday Art Walk
Friday, April 6, 6-9pm - 2nd Reception during the Corpus Christi April First Friday Art Walk

Keynote Speaker
FAKE NEWS/REAL ARTISTS: 3rd Annual TAMU-CC Fine Arts Graduate Student Symposium
At the Islander Gallery, Corpus Christi, Texas
Friday, March 2, 2018, 1-5pm

I am honored that symposium organizer Laura Petican, Ph.D, Assistant Professor of Art History and Director of University Galleries invited me to be the keynote speaker for the third annual Graduate Student Symposium in The Department of Art at Texas A&M University – Corpus Christi.  This year's theme is FAKE NEWS/REAL ARTISTS. The symposium offers graduate students currently enrolled in the Master of Fine Arts degree program at TAMU-CC an opportunity to present aspects of their research related to maintaining a vital studio practice in our present socio-political environment. Presenters will discuss not only the challenges and successes of their interdisciplinary practices, but will assert a theoretical and historiographical position for their projects – studio- or research-based – as a response to a current mass media atmosphere where notions of the fake and the real are precariously intertwined.

Small Works Contemporary Art Month Corpus Christi (CAMCC) 
K Space Gift Shop Gallery
K Space Contemporary, 415D Starr St., Corpus Christi, Texas
April 6, 2018 - April 28, 2018

Small Works is an exhibition of works by K Space members and artists participating in CAMCC. This tiny preview of other CAMCC shows going on around town featured artworks the size of a 5″ x 7″ postcard or smaller.

Land Report East 5 
COOP Gallery, Nashville, Tennessee
March 3-30, 2018

I am excited to be a part of this upcoming group exhibition of works by the members of Land Report Collective. 
For this exhibition titled Land Report East 5, I will be displaying Turf Roll, 2017.

The Land Report Collective deals with landscape in fundamental ways and as a foundational reference point. Bajuyo’s work is fueled by compassion and a critique of capitalism, as she explores perceptions of value in order to foster an awareness of the role of social amnesia on consumer behavior. Brown considers the politics of mountaintop removal in his construction of objects and installations while also creating playful formal assemblages. Jobe typically creates schemes for public interaction through the delineation of pathways or through site-specific focal points. Jones responds to desert environments with experimental interactions, model scale sculpture, and large scale outdoor works. Kikut incorporates a lifelong interest in the horizon line in a series of paintings with flat Midwestern landscapes as his muse. Shadwell views the landscape from a non-traditional lens, responding to ephemeral images from highway road cameras, monumental mining operations and the optical nature of the salt flats through drawing, sculpture and video installation.

Leticia Bajuyo
Jason S. Brown
Brian R. Jobe
David L. Jones
Patrick Kikut
Shelby Shadwell

Invitational Sculpture Group Exhibition
Elmira College, Elmira, New York
February 8 - March 2, 2018

I am looking forward to being part of this group exhibition of fellow sculptors at this lovely college in New York.  Curated by Derek Chalfant, Associate Professor of Art at Elmira College

My addition to the exhibit will be: 
Forces of Nature: Whirlpools and Walmart Bath Rugs, 2008

Juror
Tri-Group 54
At the Galvan House, Corpus Christi, Texas
Exhibition dates: February 2- March 2, 2018
Opening Reception: Friday, February 2, 6-8pm

Tri Group 54 will celebrate its 54 years of making local talent available for art enthusiasts in the community.  Submissions: Monday, January 29th 10am-2pm.

For the 2018 exhibition Tri Group 54, I am honored to be this year's juror and I look forward to getting to know more about Corpus Christi's art communities through the experience.  The exhibit will be on display in the Galvan House in Heritage Park. More than half a century ago when three local organizations partnered to put the work of local artists on display: 

The South Texas Art League
The Watercolor Society
The Art Association of Corpus Christi. 

Landing on the Island:
The Inaugural Improvisational Happening
 

TAMUCC Music, Theatre, and Art collaboration
The Wilson Theatre in the Center for the Arts
Texas A&M University - Corpus Christi

On January 20, 2018, the TAMUCC Opera Workshop students collaborated with Islander Improv all day in workshops with Ellen Denham from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi Department of Music, Meredith Melville from TAMUCC Theatre, and worked with interactive sculptures designed by Leticia Bajuyo from Texas A&M University-Corpus Christi Department of Art.

Students participated in workshops on movement, musical, and narrative improvisation all day.  Then we brought in interactive sculptures and theremins to become part of the environment. We presented an open lab performance to the audience and using audience-suggested types of islands, we all went on a journey to a tropical island, the island of misfit toys, and Jumanji.

Below are temporary public installations which continue to be on display in 2018

Pop Goes the Weasel, 2017
Franconia Sculpture Park, Minnesota
2017 Open Studio Fellowship and Residency
Materials: Chain-link fencing, chain, steel, hardware, and paint.
Dimensions: 6ft 6in H x 12ft W x 12 ft D

A brief statement about Pop Goes the Weasel, 2017:

In my artwork, I utilize recognizable and seemingly neutral commonplace objects that invite audiences to name, compare, and participate in theatrical re-arbitrations of value.  Reminiscent of a Jack-in-the-box toy, the turnstile in the center appears to be winding up the chains and thus adding tension to the fence.  The fence, in turn, attempts to fulfill its role in maintaining boundaries and restricting movement; but the impasse between fence and turnstile results in a distorted stasis that suggests the unsustainability of the tense situation.

By using chain-link fencing, the audience is placed outside this small yard and can witness the effect of the turnstile on the fence.  Can a Jack-in-the-box go backwards?  Can the box be removed? How can this tug-of-war be resolved?

Crank, crank, crank
Turn, turn, turn
Just a little more
Watch and discern.

For more information about Franconia's fellowships and deadlines, visit http://www.franconia.org/ArtistOpportunities.html